Wojciech’s work is a regular feature throughout the online community. As a recent addition to the SlashThree art collective and a senior author at psdtuts+, he’s left his mark quite clearly as a leading young digital artist and illustrator. Today it gives us great pleasure to present you with an exciting in-depth interview with Wojciech . We hop you enjoy it.
Q1: A warm welcome to Artisnavi. Lets kick of with an introduction, tell us a bit about yourself and what inspired you to join the creative art&design community ?
Hello! Wojciech Pijecki here, aka. Synectic. I’m 25 and come from Poland – Świebodzin. My story with digital art began around 5-6 years ago. Basically my family got me interested in getting into digital art. They saw my first sketches, drafts and web designs and thought it has some potential. I still wasn’t encouraged enough, but then, once upon a time my teacher came into class and by seeing my design he was like “wow, nice, you could sell this to some company for at least 30$”. So this was the kick that I needed to get me more into it. When I realized I can earn money on this, why not take it more seriously. Since then I started learning and sleeping with Photoshop.
Q2: You are renown for your photo manipulation skills. Could you tell us why you chose to work almost completely within this genre and do you find it at all limiting ?
Photo manipulation just doesn’t limit you in any way, that’s what makes it great. Once you get the right skills you’re able to mix it or turn to almost any style you want. However, it’s a very demanding genre. But that’s why I simply love it, as it just forces you to be good at what you do. Hours of hard work always pay of a fantastic result, which you can feast your eyes with.
Q3: Personally, I’ve learnt a great deal from your tutorials on psdtuts and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Could you talk to us a bit about your close relationship with the site ?
Thanks! Indeed my relationship with Psdtuts lasts for a very long time. Obviously my work wasn’t that good in the beginning, I had to skill up before we truly started co-operating. Also I was never hired by Envato, but we did a couple freelance arrangements with their editors about regular writing for them. So, those arrangements are still valid, however I don’t have so much time to write tutorials as I had before. It’s pretty exhausting stuff and I’ve also projects commissioned by other clients, so now I try to keep it at least at 1 tutorial per month.
Q4: On the subject of tutorials. Many designers don’t feel comfortable writing them for perhaps the fear of losing their unique style or being constantly replicated by amateurs. What are your thoughts on this ?
Well, I’d have never gotten into place where I’m now if it wasn’t for tutorials. I mean, most things I’ve learned came from my own experience and practice, but tutorials were the first step that gave me some good start with Photoshop. So I just can’t go totally negative on them. Obviously I’m not happy with people who replicate work, but this is something you just can’t avoid. Probably everyone of us, at least once, copied someone, someday and somehow. It’s perfectly normal.
Aslo the digital art world moves forward so quickly these days. I believe that if a certain effect won’t be shown today, someone eventually will show it someday anyway. Artists are a lil’ bit too harsh on the tutorial case. After all, we’re only “selling” the process of creation, you can’t buy talent, right taste, or the vision that makes people unique.
Q5: You’ve recently joined the ranks of SlashThree. How has this experience reflected in your work ?
SlashThree is simply great. The high quality work they produce just keeps you on the right level wether you want or not. It’s a great pleasure talking and working with people there. Creating among all those great artists just pushes you to be better and better. There is no rivarly, rather a pursuit of being even more creative. So when I joined I just totally started thinking out of the box and it really helped me to improve my conceptual and executive sides.
Q6: “We,Numbers” is one of my favorite pieces from your portfolio. The concept is chilling to say the least. Could you tell us a bit about this piece and what drove you to create it ?
“We, Numbers” is one of the most complex projects I’ve created, and also one of my personal favourites. I just tried to imagine a mentally and phisically destroyed society where people need to face their reality. Conceptually it’s a very deep project – besides the overall look which makes you empathize to this little girl’s situation, there is quite some symbolism hidden over there, like:
* tied with rope; planes – repression
* sticker with number on her shirt – deprivated society order
* tattooed number on her neck – mental mark, broken spirit
* tears; taped mouth – terror
* birds – signs of hope
More story and case study of this project can be found under: http://www.behance.net/gallery/We-Numbers/886409
” We, Numbers “
Q7: Congratulations on taking part in desktopography 2011. What’s the concept behind “The Land Within” and how long does it take you to make such a piece ?
Thanks! Actually it was pretty funny, as it was already too late to create something for Desktopography 2011. The exhibition was about to run in few days and I haven’t even started my project back then. They kept putting forward the release date, so just decided to open Photoshop, drop the logo and go with some experimenting and thought maybe I’ll figure out something. It took me almost whole day, but I got not only the right idea, I also found some cool, suitable pictures and dealt with the manipulation in almost 60-70%. So basically the project was half ready after one day. The next 2 days I’ve spent like 3-5 hours on touching up details and it was done. When it comes to completion time / quality ratio, this project is just an undisputed winner.
About the conceptual approach. Well, somewhere in my experimentation I figured out that it would be cool to create a world inside other world and show the exact frontal transition between them.
Q8: What are your plans for the future, in terms of art and your future career in general ?
I don’t consider me doing anything else than art ;) so obviously I’m planning to run a business over it.
Q9: Thank you so much for giving us this great opportunity and all the insight. What would you like to leave our readers with ?
The pleasure is on my side, thank you as well! Few simple words: get experience, get inspiration, get to work and get it done!
- Wojciech on the web :
Ahmad is an 18 year old studying for a degree in Physics&Cosmology. He spends his spare time exploring his love for Art&Design.
